ABSTRACT
The importance of religion varies greatly between people and between countries, but is difficult to measure. Faith is generally taken as referring to religion or its more diffuse counterpart, spirituality. The nature of science is taught in school science in many countries, and there is a large science education literature as to what is meant by the nature of science and how it might be taught. Issues can be controversial for a variety of reasons, whether they are issues that might be considered in science lessons or more generally. Of all the science-religion issues that feature in school science, evolution is perhaps the most notorious. In most countries, though, there is much of value in science teachers addressing issues to do with religion so long as the intention and anticipated outcome is that such teaching will aid students’ education, especially their science education.
